The Golden Princess Conclusion: mostly a celebration of my friends

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My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

It’s so strange. I started this blog when I left my high paying job, my studio apartment, my friends, and the place I’d lived for 10 years to see the world. I wanted a place to keep my memories, an easy reference to the question: tell me about your trip, and a way for people who want to hear about my travels to hear about them. Selfishly, it’s also kind of a journal for me to keep my memories for myself. I’ve found that it’s impossible to write about the places I visit on the ship while I’m on the ship so I have to write it all when I get home. I was so excited to go to the other side of the world, but I feel like most of what happened during this contract happened on the ship. Here are the stories that didn’t fit in anywhere else:

Fruit Basket:

High ranking officers can get fruit baskets in their room. My rank isn’t that high, but one time I managed to snag one. I was so proud of myself! And I never managed it again. I did try to smuggle fruit from the buffet upstairs sometimes, but that was a lot of trouble.

Uniform Swap Party

Uniform swap party was one of the most popular themed parties that was hosted in the ward room. One of our Cruise Staff storage lockers was just down the hall, so half of the people there were wearing our Hawaiian shirts, saying they were cruise staff. On the Caribbean, my friend Alan let me borrow his three stripe uniform (he’s very important) as an Electrical Technical Officer, but, unfortunately, he wasn’t on this ship. I found that I was already dressed the same as Sefora, one of our last videographers (the videographers are being discontinued on Princess). We were both wearing black with blazers, so I dropped the lower half of my ponytail to match her hairstyle and we swapped name tags. Sefora was a pillar of caring kindness who I seemed to run into whenever I needed it. She is from Italy, so we first bonded over that. She would let me try to speak to her in my cave man Italian when I could. I saw her around all the time– her office was in the closet of the Entertainment office (that’s how it works on cruise ships– closets become offices) and she often had to stand in the photo gallery which was basically a hallway on my main route between events (and it was the way to the mess). We exchanged pleasantries more often than we had deep conversations, but she made me feel like I had a friend when I needed one. She could see through my smile on the days when I was trying with all my might to keep it together in public. She was there for the little celebrations we could share in passing, and made my commute something I looked forward to.

Matt Baker

Matt Baker was like a shooting star in my contract– bright, memorable but only there for a brief time. As I mentioned before, he had been the Cruise Director before I joined, and had stepped down to Assistant Cruise Director to help us out for the crossing. There is a special skill to commanding a room– to draw people in so you have them in the palm of your hand. I’ve seen lots of people who don’t have this skill– when a party band is telling guests to come out and dance and they stare back in defiance or disinterest. I haven’t found a manual on how to do it the right way, but I have seen an example in Matt Baker. On my first night, I was having fun at a theme party for the first time. I was having fun in spite of hating the outfit I was wearing and feeling the exhaustion from having been up since 5am. Though it was nearly impossible to get a plan out of him before an event, it was an honor to watch him shine whether he was stealing all the attention on the wake show or making up lyrics as he accompanied himself on guitar. He is funny and unpredictable and I’d love to see his magic when he’s the boss.

Mel

Her first month on board, Randi would go on and on about how excited she was that her friend, a paramedic from her previous ship, was coming to the Golden. I trusted Randi’s judgement but it was difficult to be excited about someone I hadn’t met. Then when Mel came she was a ray of sunshine. She would come chat with us in the Mess, and before we knew it, we were better friends with the Medical team. Mel is a down to earth guarantee of a good time, and I didn’t spend nearly as much time with her as I wanted to.

Luke and Emily

Luke works at the front desk (I first met him in that class about driving the lifeboat) and Emily is the Captain’s circle host. They stole my phone one night to take this picture. Emily and Lauren were close, so Emily was around more often by way of Lauren. These guys were often present at the Family table and even more fun in the ward room. I miss running into them there 😉

Alex

This is Alex, our internet guy. He and I were often on the same 4 or 5pm pizza slice schedule. Before he was the internet master, he worked in production with my friend Delisa, one of my favorites from the Caribbean. As solo travelers, there is nothing more exciting than reuniting with a friend you could very well have never seen again. The next best thing is to meet people who also love those people. They must have good taste. Plus then we can send pictures to our friend in common.

Dallas

Dallas also stole my phone to take this picture, probably so I would remember him forever. Dallas was the Music Manager and a fellow American. The Music Manager had a desk in the Entertainment office, so if their contract is more than two weeks, we usually become friends. Dallas kept us entertained in the office with a flip calendar of passive aggressive insults.

The Production Cast

The production cast is filled with beautiful people with perfect bodies. I think many of us are as jealous of their looks as they are of what we get to eat and drink. As the months pass and they are out of rehearsals we get to spend more leisure time with them, they become our friends. The one who had the biggest impact on me was Oliver, who is smiling next to Matt on his phone.

Oliver

Arts and Crafts Wizard (and Future Cruise helper) by day, tall male dancer by night, Oliver also transforms into a gorgeous drag queen after hours. Early in my contract while the Cruise Director’s staff was overwhelmed with the crossing, Matt found an email challenging every ship to make a music video about sorting food waste to a song the corporation had written called the Food Waste Shuffle. The deadline was three days later. Matt put Oliver in charge. Oliver put together a script, made pictures of the shots he wanted, made a Mary Poppins costume, and filmed the majority of the music video between 11pm and 5am– you know, the hours that aren’t completely devoted to the guests. I told him I had brought a Belle costume (I hadn’t put together that I was the Golden Princess yet) and a chicken costume– to please call me if he needed me. I got the call at 1am, rolled out of bed and up to Skywalkers Night Club to film the final scene. Oliver appreciated my willingness to contribute in the middle of the night, and I appreciated all the other work and creativity he had contributed. After that we were the kind of friends where if there was an opportunity for one of us to help out the other, it became a high priority. When Oliver finished the video, he gave me a copy and I showed it to anyone who would watch. It is brilliant. He didn’t just put video to a song, he satired (I know that’s not a word) clever lyrics that both entertained and actually taught how to sort food. Months later we heard through the grapevine that we were in the finals. This was a competition not just with other Princess ships– it was a competition within the whole Carnival family. We ended up getting an honorable mention supposedly because we didn’t totally follow the rules. Whatever. In my book, we won.

In December, Oliver did his drag show for the crew. It was an incredible multimedia spectacular. The Entertainment department reserved the first couple of rows, and the rest of the theater was full of crew who had probably never seen anything like this. Many of them may have been there hoping to win BINGO which would be called by Miss Titty Kaka after the show. The joke I remember the most is that he thanked us for supporting the LGBTQASPCAYMCA community. Sitting in that theater I felt so moved and honored to be a part of it. The show was polished, hilarious, and it celebrated inclusiveness. Then Titty Kaka rolled up and down some silk sheets and danced in mid air.

At the end of the show she cleaned off her makeup on stage. I can’t remember if it was to a song or a monologue, but by the end there was a bin full of makeup wipes and the tall, leggy Marilyn Monroe look alike was Oliver once again. I was in tears. I’m in tears now a little bit as I write this. There is a little voice in our gut that gives us little hints of things to do that will make our spirits soar. I think a lot of times that voice tells us to do things that are not socially acceptable. It can be risky and scary to be that disruptive. But I believe that all the magic in the world comes from people listening to that voice. In my opinion, Oliver’s show was that kind of inspiring magic and profoundly one of the highlights of my contract.

Matt’s last night

On the Caribbean Matt taught me how to love my job. I’d spent nine months showing up and trying to do things the right way, which varied with every Cruise Director and how much they cared about what we were doing. Matt’s goal was to increase the customer satisfaction scores– when the guests left and filled out the survey, were they happy with the entertainment? The way to increase the scores was to make every event a show– it was more important that people were laughing and having fun than it was to follow the rules. The more fun he had the more fun the guests had. With many Cruise Directors, when I found myself on the schedule with them, it meant I had to be the responsible one– my job was to make sure they had everything they needed to do their show. When I was on an event with Matt, I was excited. Did I have to do all the prep? Absolutely. But afterward, we would talk about what worked and what didn’t, what was funny and what we could do better next time. Oh man do I love that stuff.

As Entertainment Director, Matt was my boss’ boss, so he wasn’t really supposed to do that. I still picked his brain at every opportunity, and I probably asked his advise more often than I asked my direct boss. This time he let me in on his scheduling tricks and taught me how he entertained the guests and made them happy without being in the show. Beyond that we were friends. Matt was my lunch buddy and my favorite person to go ashore with (especially when we were on the hunt for sushi– sushi with Matt is like a holiday meal). He ended up extending his contract a few times, and when it was finally time for him to go home, I realized that we’d been working together just shy of a year. Another one of the reasons that I liked working with Matt so much is that I truly felt like he had my back. He made me feel really safe which allowed me to do my job well. His leaving felt like I wasn’t just losing a friend, I was losing a security blanket. I’d also forgotten to make any other really close friends– you know, the kind who get updates on absolutely every mildly interesting thing that happens to you in a day.

Luckily, Lauren and Randi stepped in as my ship best friends.

Lauren and I kind of each did our own thing the first 2/3 of my contract, but by the end I was booking flights to visit her in Liverpool, where she grew up. Now we’re still in touch in a group chat on an almost daily basis. She was there since the beginning and remembered all the crazy stories that made us laugh and cringe — from ghost stories to the man overboard adventure. With Matt’s guidance, we had made Beatles Name that Tune and ABBA Name that Tune very successful events where we had more fun hanging out and playing music than we cared about taking the trivia seriously. Lauren was the life of every party. She is carefree and fun without needing to be the center of attention. Her Scouse accent makes me keel over with laughter and I loved trading roles with her just to see what jokes she would come up with (that, yes, I will steal). With cruise ships on hold at the moment, Lauren got a job teaching in Abu Dhabi. For someone who is just a couple years out of college, I am baffled by her maturity, I admire her sense of self and her courage and I can’t wait to go visit her on the other side of the world.

Randi is the one who brought us all together. She joined in January which was just past half way through my contract but it felt like it was the end because so much had happened before that. When she arrived, she took over my role as the most responsible and organized person on the Cruise Director’s staff. Having someone else on the team who would make sure things were ordered when we were close to running low, or would organize and tidy the lockers was so nice. As it was often easier to take care of something myself than to ask someone else for help, it was an absolute delight to discover that Randi had already taken care of something on the task list of extra things I gave myself to do. She joined me at 6 o’clock family dinner and made sure Lauren came too. When Lauren went home, Randi kept up our group chat so it felt like Lauren was still there hanging out with us. Randi became the person I told a secret to when I promised not to tell anyone. This was especially fun when the world was shutting down and I was getting all sorts of gossip from the Captain. He told me not to tell anyone– especially not my bosses (who might then make decisions based on this information). I promised and then told Randi. We would speculate and brainstorm on how we could adapt to new information which always turned out not to be true. Anyway, the drama was fun. Before long, I felt like I’d known Randi forever. She is a big fan of Grey’s Anatomy and her enthusiasm inspired me to rewatch the show from the beginning. It was so nice to have someone to react to about a show that no one else I know is watching. Randi is the kind of person who enhances every experience. She is chill when I am stressed, she is always ready for fun, she takes on the role of the grown up when we need someone to do that, and she is the perfect person to go to with gossip, even when she has no idea who you are talking about. She is taking advantage of the pause to go back to school in Canada to become a teacher. Like Lauren, I am so impressed that I completely forget how young Randi is when we hang out. I worked with a couple of Cruise Staff in their early twenties who prioritized the kind of partying one typically gets out of their system in college. Now we’ve been friends long distance longer than we were what could have been mere friends of convenience.

When I first met Erich (pronounced like Eric– his family is German, okay? But Randi and Lauren and I consider ourselves close enough friends that we pronounce it with the normal ‘ch’ sound), I thought he was the most miserable person I had ever met. He did not like his job and did not want to be where we were, and I could not figure out why everyone kept inviting him to things. But everyone kept inviting him to things, and when the conversation moved past the most miserable relevant things, Erich became a mandatory part of the group. I just can’t get over how much I like him now compared to my first impression. Pretty soon he got promoted to a land based job and his days on the ship were numbered. With his new job in the future, Erich became less and less interested in his current job. Every evening he would find as many letters as he could that needed to be delivered to cabins and he would stop and hang out with us on his way there, and sometimes on the way back too. Our usual meet up was in the Wardie. Erich ended up repatriating (yes, isn’t it crazy that it’s THAT dramatic) the day before I did. As travel arrangements were adapting hourly, we started making backup plans in case Princess’ arrangements didn’t work out. If we got to Los Angeles, I would happily road trip with him to his home in Boston. There aren’t many people that are easy enough to be with that I’d want to spend three thousand miles with them, but Erich totally passes the test. Coincidentally, we are soon to be reunited on serendipitously intersecting road trips. I am so excited to hang out with him (well, socially distant hanging out now) in real life. I love seeing people I was very likely to never see again.

The Ward Room

There are not many ships with Ward Rooms, so I felt blessed to have the opportunity to hang out on one. There is a Crew bar (and rec room) in the front of the ship. The Ward Room is a bar for Officers in the back of the ship. The Ward Room was small and allowed for conversation, rather than people shouting at each other over loud music. Sometimes the music was loud and there was dancing, but I enjoyed the chance to chat with people from different departments at a normal volume. During the day, it was a quiet place when I didn’t have time to go back to my cabin on the opposite side of the ship between events. At night, it was usually where the cool people hung out.

The storm in Melbourne

This story is absolutely not worth the bold headline. I just thought the clouds looked really cool.

The ghost of Lauren

Read My Lips Lip sync Challenge

I loved the Lip Sync Challenge. When I first heard about it I was completely overwhelmed with the pressure to be creative. Luckily Matt asked me to be in his Dirty Dancing routine. We won most of the time on the Caribbean. We didn’t when he was the Entertainment Director instead of the Cruise Director– the guests knew me better than they knew him! After Christmas I had to come up with some routines on my own. My most successful one was “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. Those Titanic jokes are always a hit on cruise ships. Ironically. I usually came in second place after Yukie who did the song from Frozen in Japanese. Yukie is normally so proper and reserved, that she is completely endearing when she puts herself out there. Toward the end, it became harder to get other departments to participate, so we had to come up with more songs. I tried Total Eclipse of the Heart which was better in my head than it was on stage. My best second song was Tale as Old as Time from Beauty and the Beast– I happened to have the dress for it. As a kid I would spend hours in the backyard acting out performances of songs. This concept of a lip sync battle is like a childhood dream come true. I love watching other people’s performances as much as I like being in it.

BINGO on The Golden Princess

Fortuna Luck (a character created by Princess) calls Bingo on the Medallion Class ships, so I didn’t get the chance to call BINGO until Micah went home for vacation. I got a call saying I had about 24 hours to come up with a name, and a gimmick. I could expense props and costumes if I needed them. I was feeling at a loss creatively so when it came down to the deadline, I decided to play to my strengths– people seemed to love it when I looked like a hot mess (Matt would often ask why I looked like I was having a midlife crisis when I was dressed as Tiffany Chastain for our High Seas Heist Event. I was also a hot mess in the Green Room of our Do You Wanna Dance Competition). I gave the song ‘Karma Chameleon’ to the Production Staff and sang over the chorus “Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly Chameleon… I come and go, I come and go…. Winning will be easy if you shout BINGO!” Every day I would go to the costume closet and wear a couple of things that didn’t match– you know to blend in. Because that’s what chameleons do– they blend in to the background.

On the last day, when the jackpot has to go (and the lounge is packed) I really blended into the background– I dressed just like the ship– the Golden Princess.

I had so much fun wearing that dress first for Disney Trivia (don’t worry– I didn’t wear the dress over my uniform in the evening), and then at every opportunity I could find– the Lip Sync Challenge, our staged Radio Play Trivia, in the Green Room of the Dance Competition, and then finally at BINGO.

Bye Golden!

I was so much more excited to join the Golden Princess than I ever was to join the Caribbean– I was going to Australia and New Zealand and I got to work with my favorite boss/friend again. By the end I had a hard time letting go. I was leaving early, missing out on my local leave in Sydney. My friends were staying onboard indefinitely to hang out on the ship without guests (which is a lot like the first time you get to stay home alone without your parents). Now I’m home with nothing but free time. I’ve been devouring books from the library, marathon watching tv shows, learning new Zumba routines and hanging out and playing games with my family. Who knows when the world will open up again, and ships will be able to unpause, but I certainly hope my next contract is as attractive if not more than my contract on the beeeutiful GOOOOOOLden Princess!